I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: george floyd

  • taken from this week’s headlines or last year’s or the years before

    taken from this week’s headlines or last year’s or the years before


    The nation’s attention is focused this week on the continuing trial of the man who murdered George Floyd last summer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The impact of Mr. Floyd’s death lives on in the memories of the bystanders, police and most importantly his family who lost someone they can never replace. The trial touches the nerves of people far beyond the courtroom, however, even around the world as the death brought a spotlight on systemic racism and lawlessness of the people we expect to be the most law abiding. We have a broken criminal justice system which this trial exposes in living color that could be filmed in black and white.

    And yet, the week’s headlines were diverted to other, more familiar tragedies:

    1 Dead, 5 Hurt in Bryan Mass Shooting; Trooper in Critical Condition; Victim Identified

    Mass shooting comes on the same day President Biden calls gun violence an epidemic and Gov. Abbott vows to protect gun rights in Texas.

    (Associated Press, April 08, 2021)

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    Lone survivor of SC mass shooting has now died, coroner says, bringing death toll to 6

    (The Charlotte Observer, April 10, 2021)

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    On March 13, 1993 Texas newspaper columnist Molly Ivins (1944-2007) published this piece called Taking a Stab at our Infatuation with Guns.  I have reprinted it several times during the past nine years because I think it’s as timely today as it was 28 years ago.

    Guns. Everywhere guns. Let me start this discussion by pointing out that I am not anti-gun. I’m pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife.

    In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We’d turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don’t ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

    As a civil libertarian, I of course support the Second Amendment. And I believe it means exactly what it says: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.

    I am intrigued by the arguments of those who claim to follow the judicial doctrine of original intent. How do they know it was the dearest wish of Thomas Jefferson’s heart that teen-age drug dealers should cruise the cities of this nation perforating their fellow citizens with assault rifles? Channelling?

    There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.

    The comparison most often used is that of the automobile, another lethal object that is regularly used to wreak great carnage. Obviously, this society is full of people who haven’t got enough common sense to use an automobile properly. But we haven’t outlawed cars yet.

    We do, however, license them and their owners, restrict their use to presumably sane and sober adults and keep track of who sells them to whom. At a minimum, we should do the same with guns.

    In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster. Those who want guns – whether for target shooting, hunting or potting rattlesnakes (get a hoe) – should be subject to the same restrictions placed on gun owners in England – a nation in which liberty has survived nicely without an armed populace.

    The argument that “guns don’t kill people” is patent nonsense. Anyone who has ever worked in a cop shop knows how many family arguments end in murder because there was a gun in the house. Did the gun kill someone? No. But if there had been no gun, no one would have died. At least not without a good foot race first. Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

    Michael Crichton makes an interesting argument about technology in his thriller “Jurassic Park.” He points out that power without discipline is making this society into a wreckage. By the time someone who studies the martial arts becomes a master – literally able to kill with bare hands – that person has also undergone years of training and discipline. But any fool can pick up a gun and kill with it.

    “A well-regulated militia” surely implies both long training and long discipline. That is the least, the very least, that should be required of those who are permitted to have guns, because a gun is literally the power to kill. For years, I used to enjoy taunting my gun-nut friends about their psycho-sexual hang-ups – always in a spirit of good cheer, you understand. But letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane.

    I do think gun nuts have a power hang-up. I don’t know what is missing in their psyches that they need to feel they have to have the power to kill. But no sane society would allow this to continue.

    Ban the damn things. Ban them all.

    You want protection? Get a dog.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • this country doesn’t love us back


    “There are other cases… of officers who seem to be ‘trigger happy.’ In a number of instances, Negroes have been shot, supposedly in self-defense, under circumstances indicating, at best, unsatisfactory police work…and at worst, a callous willingness to kill.”

    (Excerpt from 1947 report “To Secure These Rights” produced by Harry Truman Committee on Civil Rights as quoted in opinion by Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King on June 19th, 2020)

    We know about the callous willingness to kill from the names of just a few of the many African Americans who speak from their graves, American lives lost at the hands of police brutality in cities across the country. Samuel DuBose – Cincinnati, 2015. Terrence Sterling –  Washington, D.C., 2016. Freddie Gray – Baltimore, 2015. Michael Brown – Ferguson, Missouri, 2014. Walter Scott – Charleston, South Carolina, 2015. Rayshard Brooks – Atlanta, 2020. Tamir Rice – Cleveland, Ohio, 2014.  Trayvon Martin – Sanford, Florida, 2012. Breonna Taylor – Louisville, Kentucky, 2020. Eric Garner – New York City, 2014. George Floyd – Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2020.

    This week Jacob Blake’s name was added to the 2020 infamous roll call of victims of “unsatisfactory police work” – this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As destructive wild fires raged in California claiming the life of a helicopter pilot attempting to douse the inferno, as a Category 4 Hurricane called Laura gathered the power to strike along the Gulf Coast shores in Louisiana bringing life threatening winds and water reminiscent of Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, as the number of American lives lost in the worst pandemic of our history reached the dubious milestone of 180,000 +,  a police officer shot an unarmed African American man seven times in the back when he attempted to get in the car where his three young sons waited and watched. Jacob Blake will likely be paralyzed if he survives the bullet wounds.

    Doc Rivers, head coach of the NBA franchise Los Angeles Clippers, had an emotional reaction to the police shooting in an interview on August 25th. “…we’ve been hung, we’ve been shot…it’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country doesn’t love us back…the training (for police) has to change. My dad was a cop, I believe in good cops. We’re trying to get them to protect us like they protect everyone else…as an American you need to be outraged at that video. All we ask is that you live up to the Constitution.”

    Yesterday the wide world of sports came to a grinding halt as athletes from both the NBA and WNBA, major league baseball and soccer teams all joined together to promote social justice through police reforms long overdue in our nation by boycotting their respective games. Players across the board said this killing of black people through police brutality must stop. Our lives do matter, they agreed, and we want to see genuine criminal justice changes that guarantee our families equal safety and protection under the law. Tennis players rallied around the protest of Naomi Osaka by postponing the semi-finals at the Western and Southern Open scheduled for play today. No justice, no peace, no sports.

    Senator Kamala Harris reminded us in a statement this afternoon that our pledge of allegiance calls for “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” We know, and we have always known that promise is unfulfilled for people of color, but now cell phones record that broken promise every time a video of these egregious acts goes viral on social media to be seen by anyone and everyone. Pretending, denying, disavowing, obfuscating no longer are viable options for people of good will who embrace the truth.

    Wake up, America, it’s time to love them back. We can, and we must, do better.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned. By all means, VOTE in November.

     

     

  • from tinkering to transformation: the intersection of equal justice under the law


    The United States Supreme Court ruled early yesterday morning that gay and transgender people are protected from workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  I heard the actual Breaking News on my tv as I sat in my favorite blue recliner with my dog Charly who really didn’t understand my sudden outburst into tears – not my usual response to the Breaking News recently.

    My commitment to social justice issues for more than 40 years made this news especially sweet to an old dyke growing up in the 1950s in a tiny town in the piney woods of southeast Texas. The marriage equality decision by the Supremes in June of 2015 had been huge and one I never thought I would live to see. And now, another unimaginable move forward for the gay and trans communities with protection in the places we work. We can no longer be fired for who we are. The 6 – 3 decision was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, whose phone must be ringing off wherever he keeps it today. Good on you.

    Charly has become more accustomed to outbursts of anger with expletives directed at the perfect storm created by the Covid-19 chaotic governmental responses to a pandemic that continues to spike in my home state of South Carolina as it rages along in other states having similar numbers – always sure to warrant choice words from me – plus the murders of two black men by white policemen in recent weeks that have called to our public consciousness once again the systemic racism we have continued to address and ignore sporadically for more than 400 years of our country’s history. As Maya Wiley, an attorney and American Civil Rights activist, explained “We must move from tinkering with change to true transformation.” Amen to that.

    My Texas sister Leora called me early today and shouted a loud “Congratulations!” over the phone. I was not quick enough to understand what she meant. When I asked her, she said for the Supreme Court decision yesterday for you and Pretty and all the other people who are trying to find equal justice where you work. I was overwhelmed and told her my celebration had been muted by the other horrific acts in recent days to which she responded: “You can breathe right now in this one place so celebrate the moment. We can all breathe again when we get the knees off our necks because of George Floyd’s death.” My African American sister gets it – the intersection of all of our hopes for a day when equal justice under the law is more than just empty words. I love Leora for many reasons, but today I love her for reminding me to be happy.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

  • I can’t breathe


    Webster’s Thesaurus defines moral as “ethical, or right and wrong, or proper conduct, personal. Ethical, right, proper, virtuous, just fair, aboveboard; pure, honest, high-minded, saintly…”

    Democracy is defined in the same dictionary as “government by the people, representative government; state having government by the people. Fairness, equality, political equality.”

    After the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmad Arbery in recent days, we have an opportunity to become better people – I hear the voices of our higher angels calling us to be just fair.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.